Summary:

Argan, a fearful but miserly hypochondriac, divides his time between summoning the doctor to care for his ills and trying not to settle the resultant bills. He resolves to marry his daughter, Angélique, to a medical student, hoping to acquire unlimited access to gratis consultation. The chosen fiancé is an unattractive dolt, who would never interest Angélique, even if she were not already in love with clever, handsome Cléante, who poses as her music instructor.

Argan's wife, however, plans to send Angélique to a convent, removing her from the line inheritance. At the urging of the sensible servant Toinette, he feigns death to test his wife's affection only to discover her contempt. Again with the help of Toinette, the young lovers convince Argan to liberate himself from the twin tyrannies of his ailing body and his grasping physicians by becoming his own doctor. The play closes with the physicians' lively examination of Argan and his entry into the profession, full of musical pomp and pidgin Latin.

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This is the fictional journal of four months in the life of Doctor Tyko Glas, a turn-of-the century Swedish physician, who writes, "How can it have come about that, out of all possible trades, I should have chosen the one which suits me least?" Though Doctor Glas is over 30 years old, he has "never been near a woman." In fact, he finds the physical aspects of sexual intercourse rather repulsive. Even more repulsive is his patient Rev. Gregorius, a nasty 57-year-old minister who happens to have a lovely young wife.

One day Mrs. Gregorius, also his patient, presents Doctor Glas with a strange request. Her husband's sexual advances have become onerous to her. Could the doctor tell him that she suffers from a pelvic disease and, therefore, must avoid sexual relations for several months? Doctor Glas agrees to do so, but the Rev. Gregorius is not easily put off. He believes that God has given married couples the duty to procreate, so sex is not simply a question of pleasure or preference. It is a question of duty. Thus, he rapes his wife, believing that their sacred marital duty is more important than her health.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Gregorius admits (to the doctor) that she has fallen in love with someone else, a handsome young businessman. As the summer progresses, it is clear that Doctor Glas has fallen in love with his patient, a love that is as tortured as it is silent and unrequited. Eventually Glas becomes convinced that he must save his patient from her repulsive husband's advances by murdering him.

Thus, the doctor carefully plans to poison the minister, using cyanide pills that he had once prepared for his own suicide. His plan is successful. The minister dies of an apparent "heart attack." Unfortunately, at around that time the handsome lover announces his engagement to another woman. The bereft Mrs. Gregorius, who sees nothing in the doctor, is left alone. Doctor Glas is also alone. "Life has passed me by," he ruminates.

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As Dickens does so well, the writer treats the reader to a wide spectrum of the society of London in the 19th Century. The central issue in this novel is the hopeless slowness with which the court of Chancery moves, and the persons who are involved, either as claimants, as attorneys, or as those at the edges of the Court who seek to profit by the proceedings. The author gives us examples of the consistent behaviors of the very good (Esther Summerson and her guardian John Jarndyce) and the profoundly evil (Mr. Smallweed and Mr. Tulkinghorn) and a vast spread between these extremes.

The story is constructed somewhat as a mystery, as multiple connections among the myriad of characters are slowly revealed as the plot advances. The reader is allowed a view of the most poverty-stricken, as well as the most wealthy of the levels of society presented. The complexity of the characterizations and their intertwined lives, along with Dickens’s amazing descriptions, keep the reader moving through the tangle to its final resolution.

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In this documentary film about euthanasia in the Netherlands, a man--Kees van Wendel de Joode--with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease) requests death in his home, to be performed by his doctor, Wilfred Sidney van Oijen. The film mostly consists of what appear to be unscripted discussions between Kees, his wife Antoinette, and the doctor; however, there are also interviews with the doctor and views of the doctor seeing other patients. The film shows the doctor performing euthanasia: we watch him inject a barbiturate and then a muscle relaxant and we see him supporting Antoinette during the bedside deathwatch.

Kees has had a rapid deterioration of his ability to function: he is unable to move his legs and right arm, he can no longer speak coherently, and he is having difficulty swallowing. His wife cares for him in their Amsterdam apartment. The film documents the legal requirements for euthanasia in the Netherlands: Kees's repeated requests for euthanasia, confirmation that he has an incurable disease, the second opinion doctor's visit, and reporting the death to the municipal coroner and public prosecutor.

The film's strength lies in the sensitive treatment of the impact of this request on the patient, his wife, and especially on his doctor. Dr. van Oijen is an introspective man who cares for his patients--he makes house calls, explains medical terms to his patients, touches his patients, and asks what they are concerned about. He allows his patients (Antoinette is, in many ways, his patient too) to weep and be emotional.

The religious and moral dimensions of euthanasia are explored mostly with the doctor, who does not view himself as a wanton killer, but rather a doctor whose duty includes the alleviation of suffering. The film concludes with a voice-over stating the doctor will not sleep this night, but still has a clinic full of patients awaiting him in the morning.

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Summary:

Lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) comes to town preying on the grief of the citizens who have lost their children or seen them harmed when a school bus slid off the road and sank through a frozen lake. He encounters a network of secrets and distorted perceptions of blame, guilt, lies, and victimhood revealed by flashbacks. Grieving the loss of his challenged son, the sinister but simple motel keeper, Wendell (Maury Chaykin), warns Stephens off the case, blaming parents, children, drivers, and the road. He does not know that his wife has been sleeping in one of the vacant rooms with a good-looking widower whose son and daughter both drowned.

The Otto family, especially the mother (Arsinée Khanjian) are destroyed by the loss of their beloved adopted son, a smiling native child, called Bear. They are confused. On the one hand, they want nothing because their loss was accidental; on the other, they want vengeance because someone must be blamed for their overwhelming pain. The bus driver, Dolores, who has lost so many of "her kids" seems not to have grasped the full extent of the tragedy or the possibility that all could be blamed on her.

And yet it could. The crucial evidence is the speed at which she took the last downhill curve. The key witness is a teenager, Nicole (Sarah Polley), who sat just behind the driver and survived the accident as a paraplegic. Her father is eager for her to testify, hoping for a large settlement. It slowly emerges that his seemingly close relationship with Nicole before the accident was incestuous. Now she is seething with anger toward him--because of his past abuse? or because of his present abandonment? or both? She claims that Dolores was driving too fast. The case collapses. Stephens later sees Dolores driving a group of seniors.

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Summary:

The headstrong beauty Marcella Boyce, who has acquired radical political views while at school, returns home and becomes engaged to Aldous Raeburn, the son of her father's neighbor Lord Maxwell and a moderately conservative politician and landowner. Marcella champions Jim Hurd, a local poacher accused of murder (who is prosecuted by Raeburn): she nurses his grieving wife and dying, consumptive son and arranges his legal representation by Edward Wharton, a Socialist politician and Raeburn's romantic rival.

After Hurd's execution, Marcella breaks off her engagement, trains as a nurse, and turns her reformist efforts toward the London poor instead of the rural poor in rural villages. She refuses Wharton's offer of marriage and finally accepts Raeburn's hand.

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When Alice Sebold, author of the best-selling novel, The Lovely Bones (see this database), was completing her freshmen year at Syracuse University, she was assaulted and raped. Years after the fact, Sebold wrote this memoir about the rape and its aftermath. The book's title, "Lucky," is explained in the prologue: the police told Sebold that she was lucky to have escaped the fate of another girl who had been murdered and dismembered in the same spot. In point of fact, Sebold, a virgin before the rape, was in a sense murdered, since life as she had known it would never be the same: "My life was over; my life had just begun" (33).

In crisp, lively prose the author takes us relentlessly through the details of her rape and the police inquiry that followed. We learn also that the narrator had suffered from a poor body self-image, loved to spend her time reading, had day-dreams of becoming a poet. We learn about her family--a mother prone to severe panic attacks and a professorial father who hid behind his books, an older sister who helped Alice take care of their mother. The family was considered by neighbors to be "weird."

After the rape, Sebold felt even more isolated and "Other." She could not bring herself to tell her family, who tip-toed around her, all of the horrendous details of the assault. She realized that all who knew her were aware she had been raped and were uneasy in her presence. Her father could not understand how she could have been raped if the assailant's knife had dropped out of reach.

In spite of everything, Alice returns to Syracuse, taking poetry workshops with Tess Gallagher and a writing workshop with Tobias Wolff. Incredibly, she spots her assailant one day on the street near the college. The author notifies the police, the assailant is later arrested, and Alice agrees to press charges and to be a witness at the trial. Neither her father nor her mother have the stomach to come to the trial, but Tess Gallagher accompanies her. The account of the trial is detailed, agonizing, and fascinating.

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Summary:

The play takes place over a several-year period in the provincial town in which the Prozorov sisters and their brother Andrei live. Olga, the oldest, is a high school teacher; Masha is unhappily married to a teacher in the same school; and Irina and Andrei have dreams of moving back to Moscow. Vershinin, the new Army commander, joins the group of military hangers-on around the Prozorov home, a group that also includes the ineffectual doctor, Chebutykin, who lets everyone know that he has forgotten all the medicine he ever knew.

As time passes, Andrei marries Natalya and devotes himself to gambling, while Natalya has babies and takes over the household. Masha has a romantic affair with Vershinin; Natalya commits adultery with the school administrator. A fire rages through the town, but Chebutykin is drunk and unable to help the victims. In the end, just before the Army contingent moves to another post, Irina's fiancee is killed in a duel.

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At Madame Treplev's estate, her son, Konstantin, presents an outdoor performance of his new play, in which the single character (actually just a voice) is played by Nina, a neighbor's daughter, with whom Konstantin is hopelessly in love. When Madame Treplev, a famous actress, makes light of the angst-filled play, Konstantin angrily stops the performance

Later, Nina becomes infatuated with Trigorin, a literary man and Madame Treplev's current lover. When Madame Treplev and Trigorin move back to Moscow, Nina follows, hoping to become an actress. There, she has an affair with Trigorin. Masha, the daughter of the family steward, is in love with Konstantin (who couldn't care less for her), but marries Medvedenko, the local schoolmaster.

Two years later, Nina has returned to the country, where Konstantin continues to live and work on his writing. Konstantin believes that he and Nina might make a fresh start together, but she rejects him. In the end, he goes out and shoots himself.

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Summary:

The film covers a brief period in the life of a working-class English family: Mum (Tilda Swinton), Dad (Ray Winstone), their 18-year-old daughter, Jessie (Lara Belmont), and 15-year-old Tom (Freddie Cunliffe). They have recently moved from London to an isolated cottage on the Dorset coast. Mum gives birth to a baby girl, Alice. Tom discovers that Dad is sexually abusing Jessie. When the baby is hospitalized with an unexplained injury, apparently genital, Tom tells Mum about the incest, and when Dad confronts him and denies it, Tom stabs him.

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